


Trick or Treat

by CommaSplice



Series: Aegon Targaryen Memorial Library Universe [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Creepy, Gen, slightly fluffy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-01
Updated: 2013-11-01
Packaged: 2017-12-31 03:09:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1026560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CommaSplice/pseuds/CommaSplice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Our Halloween has somehow made it into the pop culture of Westeros. In these two vignettes, we get a glimpse into the mind of Roose Bolton and then into the head of Stannis Baratheon as they consider this pseudo holiday.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trick or Treat

**Author's Note:**

> This is set in my Game of Stacks universe, but you can totally read this by itself.

The line at the small supermarket he stops at on his way home is long and filled with customers buying last minute bags of candy. Roose is irritated, but adopts an expression of patience. He forgets sometimes about these inane holidays. 

“Hi, Dr. Bolton.”

He turns around to face one of his students. Roose dislikes seeing them out of context. It takes him half a moment and then he places her. This one sits in the third row from the back, fourth from the right. She crosses her legs far more than is necessary. Her work is adequate but not brilliant. “Ms Tyrell,” he says politely. He nods and then assumes the interaction is over. 

“It’s way too busy in here.”

He concurs, but he is uninterested in speaking with her. 

“Sansa is working till 7:00 so I got stuck getting everything for our party.”

Roose notes the contents of her basket. The girl has mixers, cocktail onions, limes, lemons, and snack food. “Mmm,” he murmurs in a noncommittal fashion.

“Shit, I should grab some candy.”

He notes how she smiles brilliantly at a man behind her and how she suggests he be so good as to hand her a few bags off an end cap. Roose watches as the man falls over himself to help her. 

Thus supplied, the Tyrell girl turns back, undoubtedly forgetting her benefactor in an instant. She frowns. “Do you have enough at home? You should stock up.”

“No, thank you.” He is not a religious man, but if he believes in anything, he believes in the old gods; he certainly is not going to participate in a fictitious holiday.

“You’re probably more organized than I am.”

He knows he is. “It is a made-up holiday taken from references from fiction and film.”

His student shrugs. “So what? It’s fun.”

“Fifteen items or less, dude.”

The customer in front of him has twenty-seven cans of cat food, a package of adult diapers, K-Y Jelly, a roll of duct tape, and three bags of Mars bars. Roose glances at the young man sharply, but he is unfamiliar to him. 

The clerk is all of sixteen and appears to be heavily under the influence of some illegal substance.

“Just check him out,” the cashier one lane over snarls. “We’ll be here all night if you don’t speed it up.”

“So do you live around here, Dr. Bolton?”

“No.” Roose takes a divider and sets out his groceries: a few potatoes, broccoli, vegetable oil, bottled water, and a newspaper. He reaches for a second divider and puts it behind his own. As the belt advances, the Tyrell girl’s bottles fall over. He rights them. 

“Are you a vegetarian?”

He pretends not to hear. He has made enough conversation for the day. 

At last the clerk begins to check him out. The boy pauses, “What is this?”

“Broccoli,” Roose tells him tightly. He hopes the cashier’s ignorance is due to either innate stupidity or whatever chemicals are coursing through his system, and not because of the King’s Landing Public School system. 

He gives the boy exact change and accepts his purchases. He spares the Tyrell girl a polite glance and leaves.

The young man who had preceded him in line is standing in front of the open trunk of an economy car. He is parked next to Roose’s unremarkable blue sedan. The young man is staring back into the store’s lighted windows. “Pretty girl.”

Roose looks around and realizes this young man is talking to him. He hesitates. “Yes. More importantly, she is a well-connected girl with many relatives in high places.” 

There is a shared look of understanding. “Gotcha. Thanks.”

Roose is not surprised to see how quickly the young man leaves. It is a pity his own son isn’t as sensible. He drives home. He takes out the venison which has been marinating since he left for the university this morning. He prepares his dinner. After his dishes are done, he lights a fire and opens up the library book he has been reading. When he reaches the last page, he takes his pen knife out, and carefully removes the page from the book. He places it on the fire. He feels something close to pleasure as the flames consume the page.

There is no candy. 

He lives well outside the suburbs of King’s Landing. His neighbors are few and far between. The ones with children are never so foolish as to come to his door for fictitious holidays or for any other reason.

* * *

The children on his street often pause in front of his house as they ride past on their bicycles.

They never stop for long. 

Stannis maneuvers his car up the driveway to his large brownstone house. His parents owned it, but it is not the home in which he grew up. That now belongs to Renly, who neither cares for nor appreciates it. He has Robert to thank for this state of affairs. Instead, Stannis lives here. 

When they were first married, Selyse tried to be positive. It was large and they would fill it with their children. 

After the third miscarriage, the empty bedrooms seemed to mock them. Every year, the house seemed larger, bleaker, sadder.

Today the place houses his daughter, Asha, and him. 

Shireen likes it, she says. Her bedroom is in the turret. When she was little, she said it was like something from a fairy tale. 

It is large and it is his. 

The children on the street think it is haunted. They dare each other to run up to the porch and race as fast as they can to get away. 

Three times now, producers of basic cable programs have approached him. They look for purportedly haunted locations for their programs; his home fits their profiles. He threatens legal action to the last producers if they do not stop contacting him.

Stannis secures his garage and walks to the front of the house. He is startled to notice lighted plastic pumpkins on each side of the path to the door. There is a cheery sign staked in the garden beds proclaiming “Happy Halloween!” He empties the mailbox and heads up the path. Little orange lights are looped across the roof of the wraparound porch. There are festive arrangements of cornhusks and gourds on each side of the steps. Three lit jack o’ lanterns sit atop the porch railing. One is carved with a traditional face; its eyes are triangles; its grin a jagged smile. There is one intricately carved with the Starfleet emblem. The last proclaims: Ask a Librarian.

He unlocks the door. 

Asha and Shireen are eating pizza and watching black-and-white haunted house movies. 

“Hi, Daddy!”

He smiles as widely as he ever does. Asha and Shireen seem comfortable together. 

“Mel’s got some fu—stupid service tonight so it’s just the three of us. Go get changed. We’ll handle the trick-or-treaters until then.”

Stannis is puzzled. “We never have any.” The self-same children who dare each other to touch the top of the porch railing stay well away on Halloween.

“We’re on our third bag, Daddy,” Shireen says in triumph. 

When he comes back down and joins them, there is a glass of water with three lemon wedges for him. He takes a piece of pizza, puts it on his plate, and carefully cuts into it with a knife and fork. 

“Did you like your pumpkin? I wanted to carve books, but it was too hard.”

“We’ll find a pattern next year,” Asha says easily. “We’ll practice too, but I think we did pretty good for our first Halloween together.”

Stannis is not quite sure when his relationship with Asha changed. She lives here now. She is not like any woman Stannis has ever known, but they get along well enough. Shireen likes her. Shireen tells him she likes seeing him happy. “Pretty well,” he corrects automatically.

“Whatever.”

“Halloween isn’t a real holiday.” Stannis says this every year. “It is taken from stories and movies.”

Asha licks pizza sauce from her fingers. “So?”

“‘Holiday’ comes from ‘holy day.’ Halloween has nothing to do with any of the religions of either Westeros or Essos. It is a made-up celebration.” Stannis has long since stopped believing in the gods.

Shireen sips her cream soda. “But it’s fun.”

He does not understand why things must be fun. He is not good with laughter. He does not understand it. He loves his daughter though. She seems content.

The doorbell rings. 

“Your turn,” Asha tells him. 

Stannis is frozen.

“They come to the door. They say ‘trick or treat.’ You admire their costumes and you give them a piece of candy each. They say thank you. You shut the door.” Asha is not sarcastic. She knows he does not know what to do. He likes this about her. 

There are four of them. They appear to range in ages from five to ten. He recognizes the oldest boy. He is the latest child on the block to stare up at the house with a mixture of fear and determination. He is dressed like a medieval knight. The eldest girl is also dressed like a knight. The emblem on her shield is of crescent moons and stars. The two youngest are dressed as a lion and a stag respectively. 

They stare at him in fear.

“Your costumes are very handsome,” he manages. Asha said they would say ‘trick or treat’ first, but he supposes it does not matter much. “Would you like some candy?” He reaches into a garish plastic pumpkin and solemnly gives them each a piece.

The girl in the knight’s costume nudges everyone. “Thank you,” she says finally when no one else answers. 

They turn to leave, but the little boy dressed as the stag looks back. “Why does your pumpkin say ‘ask a librarian.’”

“Because librarians are good at answering questions and . . . because my . . . girlfriend and I are librarians.” He assumes this is the reason. 

The little girl in the lion costume smiles then. “I like going to the liberry.”

He kneels down so he is at her eye line. “Li-brar-y,” he pronounces carefully.

She repeats it correctly this time and she giggles. 

They wave as they leave.

He rejoins Asha and Shireen. They watch the movie in companionable silence. Periodically the doorbell rings. They take turns. When they run out of candy, Asha blows out the candles in the jack o’ lanterns and turns off the porch lights. Shireen kisses her father good night and waves to Asha as she goes to her turret room. 

“Well?” Asha asks.

“It was . . . fun.”

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> So this just happened. I'm pretty sure I have typos in here. If you spot any, please tell me.


End file.
